Wednesday, May 18, 2011

Last Sunday, at approximately 5:30 PM EST, I collected the last bit of gold from my mailbox to hit the elusive one million gold!

Here are some screens from my MS stats to show you more or less how I did it. I haven't cleared MS since I installed it mid-January, so this is basically all of what I've sold.

Sorted by Number Sold:

Sorted by Money Made:

Sorted by Money per Sale

So yeah! That's kinda it. I think what pushed me past the cap was a few days of really great glyph sales. The market had more or less reset after my little experiment, and the insane amount of cheap herbs meant my profits were huge. And having my main competitor who seemed to pretty much camp the AH go MIA meant I basically controlled glyphs for a few days. I kinda slowed down on gems, mostly because I had prospecting (but milling's alright for some reason...). But I've been getting more and more in to the twink scroll market. Charging about 1k per scroll for the BiS weapon chants, and they sell. Cheap Maelstrom Crystals means cheaper to produce Landslide enchants, so I've been messing with that a bit too. Other than what you see on these screen caps, I can't think of anything particularly important.

Where do I go from here? Not really sure right now. I'm kinda done with the whole gold making stuff for now. I've more than I really know what to do with, and it's been getting more and more tedious to keep up with things. I'm thinking of slowly going through my stock, not buying anything more, just using what I have, and then retiring to a fancy island off of Azshara. Though I'm sure the goblin in me will bounce back around 4.2 to capitalize on new PvP gear.

The dilemma I'm facing now though, is whether or not to actually start spending all this gold! On the one hand, I'd like to get all the vendor mounts now, but on the other, I don't really want to go back below one million. Doesn't make much sense, that's for sure. What's the point in having all this gold if you don't spend it? I'm assuming once the initial novelty of being a WoW millionaire wears off I'll start dropping gold left and right. But for now I think I'll just revel in it.

Tuesday, May 10, 2011

Hiya friends! I'm using this study break to bring y'all a random tip that you might find useful. Something I've recently taken up on my odds'n'ends bank alt is flipping rare weapons. Pretty simple tactic to do, and tends to bring in a semi-decent amount of gold. A nice supplement for established goblins, and a great way to earn some extra coin if you're just starting out.

So what to do? Just go to your local AH, go to the default search UI, limit the search to "rare" quality weapons level 70 and below, hit search, and sort by lowest bid amount! I'll usually buy any weapon that's listed at 20g or below, and bid on anything with a 10g bid or lower (if it's not within my buying threshold, of course). I've set up a little TSM group for all the weapons I snatch too. 48hr post, 100g fallback, ~30g or something threshold (not sure on that, rarely matters anyway). As vendor prices on most sub-60 weapons are pretty low, you're not losing much in deposit costs. The 100g default is a pretty fair price too, as that's a pittance for most players right now, and you're mainly catering to people leveling alts who want some nice blue gear.

I was a bit skeptical that this would work when I first started it. After all, doesn't everyone have BoA weapons now? Well, apparently not! I'd say I sell ~5 weapons a week. Not a huge amount, but certainly worth the negligible time and effort it takes to do this! You'd be surprised at how many people sell world drop rares for next to nothing, or even better, don't understand how to price the bid (I often find weapons with a 50g+ buyout, and a 4g bid). You can also do this for epic weapons (I'll buy almost anything for 100g, post for 500g minimum), though they move a lot slower and the deposit costs are higher.

Most notable are the new entry level PvP armor sets. I'd expect great sales from these at the start of next season as new players try to catch up their gear. A very interesting new addition is the availability of crafted PvP rings, cloaks, necks, and relics. Oddly enough, these accessories are listed as BoP. I don't see the logic in this, so hopefully they'll become BoE by the time the patch rolls around (not like Scribes and JCs need MORE ways to make gold). Material costs for the new garb don't seem any different than the current gear, so plan accordingly. The costs for the new accessories are fairly low too (a few rare gems and some volatiles for the jewelry, for example).

There are also new BoE epics, though for the casual auctioneer they're likely to be out of reach. Each take eight Living Embers which presumably drop off 4.2 raid bosses and might be purchasable by VP (note that current VP are likely to become JP next patch, so hoarding them won't help). Though that doesn't seem too bad (just buy them off the AH or other players!), each piece requires 3 Chaos Orbs or 8 Dream Cloth for tailors, which still seem to be BoP.

And finally, we have new bags! Best of all, there's a 36 slot JC bag! Less exciting, a 36 slot Inscription bag and a 36 slot Mining bag. Tailors can make the JC and Scribe back for 3 Dreamcloth, so stockpiling a few will probably be worth it. The mining bag costs two Pristine Hides and twenty Volatile Earth. Personally, I don't think the mining bag will get much love, but I'd expect the JC bags to sell like crazy and the Scribe bags to be up there too.